Soldering Smoke/Fume Extractor

The process of joining electronic devices to a PCB or soldering is always performed not only by electronic engineers or technicians, but also by hobbyists. In soldering, lead is used as filler metal to join the pins of an electronic device to the PCB pads. When lead is heated during soldering, it produces toxic fumes that are hazardous to humans when inhaled. Excessive exposure to lead oxide fumes can result in lead poisoning. As suggested by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) agency, there should be proper ventilation during soldering to avoid or minimize exposure to lead oxide fumes. Read More

Isolated IGBT Gate Driver

The combined high efficiency and fast switching features of Insulated-Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) make it ideal for high current and fast switching applications. On the other hand, a gate driver is the one that accepts low-current input from a controller and produces a high-current drive input for the gate of a high-power transistor that is usually an IGBT. This reference design is an isolated IGBT gate driver, which utilizes ISO5852S from Texas Instruments. The ISO5852S is a 5.7kVRMS, reinforced isolated, IGBT gate driver with split outputs, OUTH and OUTL, providing 2.5A source and 5A sink currents. Read more

Fingerprint Drawer Lock

An electromechanical solenoid is a device that uses electrical energy to produce linear motion. It consists of a coil with a slug of metal in the middle. When current passes through the coil, the slug is pulled into the center of the coil, which makes it possible for the solenoid to pull from one end. An example of this is a lock-style solenoid. Nowadays, lock-style solenoids are used as smart locks. They are used to lock and unlock doors, cabinets, drawers, etc., by pressing a button on a remote control or a button on a smartphone. However, in this project, the lock-style solenoid is used to lock/unlock a drawer by using a fingerprint.Read more